Todd Eichenbaum, design engineer at Krell, walked me through the design of their new amplifier, the $10,500, 300Wpc 302. The power supply employs a 3kVA toroidal transformer, built-in power conditioning, a current-mirror input stage, a push-pull driver stage, and low negative feedback (8dB) around the output stage. It was paired with the $10,000 Evolution 222 stereo preamplifier.

I always seek out Wilson Audio's room at the HE shows. Is it because Wilson always gets great sound? It does—but, as the big dog on the block, they probably don't have to attend. The company supports the high-end community, not just by showing up, but by sending Peter McGrath and his fabulous recordings.

McGrath is one of the busiest live recording engineers in the country—I've been listening to his stuff with pleasure, dating back to his classic Leonard Shure, David Bar-Illan, and Earl Wild recordings on Audiofon in the early 1980s. But when he comes to the HE shows, he always brings high-rez recordings so fresh that the echoes probably haven't died in the concert halls yet.

At the Hyatt, Peter plugged his Sound Devices hard-disk recorder into a prototype DAC from BAT and played recordings of Evgeny Kissin and Renée Fleming less than one week old—and they were fabulous. And, because McGrath doesn't edit all the life and juice out of the performances, you hear real music making, with artists taking chances—yes, sometimes you hear mistakes, but when they soar, it's thrilling.

Does it show off Wilson's speakers, like the Series 8 WATT/Puppies in the HE2007 room? Heck yes—but attending shows is expensive and one heck of a lot of work. Many high-end companies opt out of the process for those reasons, leaving enthusiasts unable to experience the products that excite them when we write about them in the magazine. That may be a justifiable business decision, but it does let down audiophiles who frequently travel great distances to experience all of the High End at these affairs.

So thank you Wilson Audio Specialties, not just for showing up, but for sending your best.

Balanced Audio Technology's Geoff Poor pats the fevered brow of the REX reference preamplifier ($18,500). With 18 tubes, no wonder it has a fever!

The two piece unit has an unconventional power supply—each box contains the complete power supply for one polarity, positive in the control module and negative in the power module. Further the power module is completely tube regulated and is filtered with custom BAT oil capacitors.

Each input can be customized. Speaking of customizing, BAT lets you change the current source tube in the gain stage with one of three options: 6C19 (stock), 6H30, or 5881. To make the change, you just remove the current source board (for the 6H30) or pop in the 5881 straight. Why would you want to? "Well, tube rolling is fun," Poor allowed, "but using the tube in the current source does mean that the type of tube can have a dramatic effect on the sound."

Heavy, man—and so is REX. The power module weighs in at 39lbs and the control module tips 40lbs.

As you can see from Larry Greenhill's photo, Chord's RED Reference CD player ($28,500) is one sexy piece of kit. The gleaming metalwork, the sturdy clamshell clamp, its swooping lines—it's just gizmoidally drool-worthy.

But that's just the outside—the innards are what's really attractive. Based on Chord's BLU/DAC64, which I will be reviewing in the August Stereophile, the single-box RED employs a Philips CD Pro 2 transport mech, reclocked to a "highly accurate crystal oscillator" and the data are then filtered by a 4096-tap length WTA filter to minimize timing errors and upsampled (or not) to 44.1kHz, 88.2kHz, or 176.4kHz. That signal is then converted to analog using 1024-tap filtering and a 64-bit processing core, seventh-order noise shaping, 2048x oversampling, and improved PWM elements. Chord's John Franks, after downloading all of that data, then leaned closer and said, "And that's all done with Field Programmable Gate Arrays that can be reprogrammed with simple EEPROM chip change."

"Hmmm," I said, unsuccessfully attempting to sound intelligent. I looked at the back of the RED. "Are these digital outputs?" I asked, wondering why anyone would use a CD player with this much processing power for a transport.

"Well, we believe in flexibility, but more importantly, look over here," Frank smiled. "Those are inputs."

Larry Greenhill has already blogged about how good the Escalante Fremonts sounded in the Sound By Singer room Escalante shared with VTL. They did a disappearing act that would have done David Blaine proud. I was so impressed, I came back for a second visit and came away even more impressed—not just with the Fremonts, but with the VTL/dCS system that enabled them to sing like they did.

dCS's new Scarlatti stack— Scarlatti STT CD/SACD transport ($32,999), Scarlatti SDC DAC ($23,999), and Scarlatti SCK Master Clock ($10,999)— impressed me not just with what it managed to extract from discs, but with its simplified control interface, which is the one aspect of dCS gear that always frustrated me in the past.

Then there was all the VTL gear: TL6.5 preamp ($9500), TP6.5 phono preamp ($8500),and Siegfried 400 stereo power amplifier ($25,000). That's one, smooth, powerful system—and it drove the Fremonts to lock onto the huge room like nobody's business.

VTL's interface isn't too shabby, either. Thinking he heard a phase anomaly in Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris' "This is Us," Jeff Wong asked Luke Manley, photographed here by Larry Greenhill, if he was sure the connection chain was correct. "Yes, I'm sure it is," Luke said, "but we can find out if the disc is phase-correct." He touched a button on the TL6.5's remote and we all relaxed. That was the sound we were looking for.

"I'd like to take credit for all of this," Luke said, "but this is a huge room and we were having trouble getting the level of detail we are accustomed to—but the Nordost Valhalla interconnect and speaker cables helped, and the Shunyata power conditioner helped a lot."

That's pronounced sheeYEUfn (like that helps) and it's from Norse mythology—Sjöfn inspired passion through her singing. Guru Pro Audio head of R & D, Ingvar Öhman is clearly passionate about his loudspeaker, which he likened to "VWs that perform like Ferraris." The Gurus($1800/pair) are small, designed to be placed near the room boundaries, and were pretty impressive.

I say "pretty impressive" because Sam Tellig had pride of place in the room—he's awfully good at discovering the good-sounding cheap stuff—and I was sitting near two boundaries myself.

But Öhman was convincing in his grasp of the physics involved—and Sam stayed put for over 30 minutes, so I'm kind of betting he's on to something.

Web only, for the moment.

Some of the sweetest sound I heard in the whole show was delivered by the Jadis Symphonia CD player ($3500), Jadis E-50 50Wpc integrated amplifier ($8000), and Proac 3.8s ($7500/pair).

I sat down entranced by the soundtrack to The Forbidden Games and the disc's owner leaned over and whispered in my ear, "You used to recommend records to me when I worked at Tower."

Shwing!

But for clarity, grace, and just locked in musical rightness, the Jadis/Proac combo just rocked my world.

But I was intrigued by the company's "counter aperture Round Stream Technology," which aims drivers in the speakers' top and bottom modules at one another to create "monopoles of pressure," which generate omnidirectional sound.

A short audition demonstrated they did that pretty well. The room was so packed late Saturday afternoon, I had to listen way at the back almost out the door. The center stage was still well-filled and solid. I came back later, snagged an empty listening chair, and was impressed by detailed, robust sound.

I suspect we're going to hear more from these guys.

George Kaye was showing not one, but two new products: the Moscode 402P!

Okay, that requires some explanation. The 402P is a refinement of the 200Wpc 401, "with better power regulation and some parts changes for a more refined sound," according to Kaye. That'll set you back $6500. But you can also buy the 402 with a Placette Audio remote controlled Vishay technology resistor ladder package, which not only delivers volume control, but a front panel display as well. That'll cost $7900. Both will be available in the Fall.

With a prototype 402P driving Joseph Audio RM2XLs ($4199/pair), the Moscode did seem to boast better top-end control having more tube Fender purr and less Acoustic crunch than the 401 HR I reviewed—but I was enthralled by its low-end punch and precision.

By George, and I think he's got it!

AIX Records' Mark Waldrep, see here with Mona Waldrep, was promoting their latest DVD-Video and DVD-Audio, surround-sound release, Ernest Ranglin, Order of Distinction. Featured performers included Robbie Krieger from the Doors, Phil Chen and Laurence Juber from Paul McCartney's Wings group, and Elan Atias from the Caars. Mark reminded me that his website, Itrax.com, will go operational in June, providing one of the only sites where high-quality, lossless-compressed, surround-sound music files will be available for purchase and downloading.

"Now that's real room lock," I exclaimed, listening to the deep pedal organ notes from John Mark’s recording of James Bustard playing Herbert Howell’s Master Tallis’ Testament, recorded at the Church of St. Stevens in Providence, Rhode Island. Tierry Budge's new loudspeaker, the floorstanding, two-way, Pearlized White, $18,990/pair speaker played the pipe organ pedal chords with thunder and power when driven by the VTL S-400 amplifier and the new dCS digital front-end on one of the Sound By Singer rooms. The speaker's large enclosure holds both an external 12" woofer and an internal 12" driver, which allows Budge to rate the speaker's response down to an impressive 18Hz. Budge claims the internal 12" minimizes group delay, reducing the driver's rise time from its nominal 500ms to 55ms. The tweeter is soft-dome, ring radiator made by Scan Speak.

Andrew Watson proudly discussed the latest iteration of KEF's reference floorstanding speaker, the $20,000/pair 207 Mark 2. This new version features a new UNI-Q array that no longer needs the hypertweeter found in the Mark 1 version. The new tweeter has a vented magnetic assembly to provide more air volume behind the dome to smooth the sonic response. The manufacturer has to drill through the magnet assembly, thereby reducing its sensitivity. As a result, two additional neodymium rings were added to the usal magnet. The new tweeter's design has the voice-coil former touching the dome at two points to lend additional support and prevent breakup at high frequencies.

Krell’s new Krell IPOD Dock (KID) only costs $1200, but offers balanced outputs, signal conditioning with bass and treble adjustments, all digital control lines, diverse outputs (2 balanced, 2 RCA, and S Video) with optical isolation. The auxillary input allows one to attach a Zune or Creative Digital Zen MP3 player. The Krell KID received much attention from press and public alike.

There were a lot of turntables, and a lot of vinyl at the show, not just on demo, but for sale as well. LP vendors like Acoustic Sounds and Music Direct were doing brisk business in their booths in the Ballroom.

Sure, now he’s smiling. But when Zvox Audio’s Tom Hannaher introduced their new model 425 all-in-one-box surround sound system at a press conference on the first day of the show, he was most distressed about the fact that while the prototype unit had worked fine before he brought it to the room that the press conference was in, in the press conference room it would not make a sound at all. I was going to suggest that he take it back to the original room to see if it worked there, but I restrained myself, thinking that he probably would not appreciate the humor in my suggestion. As it turned out, my facetious suggestion was more correct I realized. On the second day of the show, back in the original room, they plugged in the 425 prior to opening it up to see if they could see anything amiss —and, lo and behold, it worked perfectly. Gremlins, I guess. I had a listen to it myself, and found the sound surprisingly full and natural for a product of this type.

VAS Audio's Sze Leung is one pleased papa when it comes to Cayin's new iDAC-1 USB-input DAC ("under $800!"). It has a Burr-Brown DAC, built-in remote controllable analog preamp that uses two 6DJ8s, sports an optical S/DIF digital input as well as the USB port, and even has a headphone jack.

"It's a great desktop solution, especially if you have powered loudspeakers like your NHT M-00s!" he said. "It's perfect for computers!"

Yes, Leung ends pretty much every sentence with an exclamation point. That's because he's excited about hi-fi. He's especially excited about good hi-fi.

Today, he was very excited.